EVENT COVERAGE

Event 10

Yesterday was one of the busiest days of the Fall Poker Open series as three champions were crowned, including our first female winner of a non-Ladies event in recent memory.

Event 8 came back from Day 2 and it was Amber Aldridge who would take a top returning stack and turn that into her biggest tournament result to date, besting an extremely difficult Final Table to take the $100,000 GTD title.

Event 9 was a one day “Deepest Stack” event, which is a favorite among every Borgata player for the insane value you get from a tournament, for just a $300 buy-in. If you saw the chip stacks when the money bubble burst, you’d think Nick Palma would have coasted to the victory, but poker isn’t that easy and it was Anthony LaRocca besting Daniel Walsh for the victory.

Lastly, we had our PLO/NLH champion crowned a day early, as the field decided not to return for Day 2, and play it out for the title. Michael Melkerson added to his already impressive FPO haul, winning the Event 10 trophy adding to two deep runs already.

The complete results have been posted to the Borgata Poker website and the links can be found below.

There are a few players to bust other events today and jump into Event 10, and they seem to be seeing some success. Michael Melkersen was leading the way at one point during Day 2 of Event 8, but ended up busting four levels into the day and walking over to the Signature Room. He now has over 140,000 and is one of the chip leaders in the field.

Jordan Ludwick busted Event 9 in tough fashion, losing set under set, and followed Melkersen’s lead by entering Event 10 a little late. Ludwick has chipped up nicely as well, eclipsing the 100,000 mark, this after getting it in {as} {ks} versus {ad} {qc} (and watching his opponent spike a queen.

As we took a walk through the Event 10 field, we caught a hand that ended up keeping Matt Stout (Las Vegas, NV) in the tournament, and pushed him back over the starting stack. Stout was all-in on a flop of {5c} {6s} {9d} for 6,650, and called in two spots.

The dealer would place down the {6c} on the turn, with the action between the two active players going check-check. The same action followed after the {ad} on the river, and Matt quickly turned over {kh} {kc}. Po Fuk Ying mucked his hand, while the other player in the hand showed {js} {9h}. The exposure of the hand was insignificant though, as Stout had the best hand, and would scoop the pot to chip up to 22,000.

There were a few more arrivals for the event, including Joe Palma (Bensalem, PA), who won this exact format event when Parx ran it during the Big Stax VII series.

David Kim’s (Brigantine, NJ) bread and butter may be high-stakes cash games, but he takes time out of his schedule to play tournaments once in a while. Kim boasts an impressive resume with earnings north of $150,000, which considering the amount of tournaments he plays against a standard tournament professional, is a very high number. Kim’s career highlighting score came back in 2012, when he won a $235 NLH Rio Daily DeepStacks event during the WSOP summer ($49,381).

Kim is just one of a group of notables to enter the event over the past level:

“Lock the doors,” Sean Wallace exclaimed before this picture was taken, just as one of his best friends took one of the employ seats to his right. Much like Trevor Deeter and Aaron Mermelstein (who were mentioned yesterday), these two met through poker, and have been inseparable since. While Queen holds the better tournament resume of the two players, Sean will let you know that it’s only because Alex “runs better” in critical spots during events. It’s all in a joking matter though, the two have great respect for each other, and each other’s game.

The pair is just two of the many notables to bypass Event 9 and wait for this late start to get into action:

Event 10 of the 2014 Borgata Fall Poker Open is now underway, with players taking their seats in the back of the Signature Room. The $300 + 40 Deep Stack NLH/PLO (9-Hand Rotation) event see players sitting down to starting stacks of 20,000. As explained the in the name of the event, the tournament alternates between NLH and PLO every nine hands. Alternates, players registering late, and re-entries will all be sitting down to full stacks. Levels will last (30) minutes throughout the entire tournament, which is scheduled as a two-day event.

We already spotted some notables buying in for this event at the cage, and once players are settled in their seats, we will bring you a list of those in the field.

The attention yesterday was focused on Event 8 and it’s two starting flights, attracting a total of 690 entries. The $100,000 guarantee was almost reached in the Day 1A flight alone, with 45 players successfully making it through the day to bag chips, from a total of 351 entries. We still don’t know the “real” identity of the flight’s chip leader, who asked to be published as “BG From BK.” The mysterious player bagged 548,500, with a handful of players we do know rounding off the top of the leaderboard, including Frank Pergola, Joe Careirra, Michael Melkersen, and Dimas Martinez. The Day 1B flight started at 5:00pm, and saw many players taking advantage of the “second chance” to try and bag chips. A total of 339 entries took a shot at bagging chips, with 48 players managing to do so. Amber Aldridge bagged the flight’s chip lead with 426,000, with Tom Pollina (377,000), Mike Lavenburg (351,000), Jonathan Borenstein (312,000), and Antonio Amato (300,500) finishing up with top five stacks.

So that brings back 93 players for Day 2 at 12:00pm this afternoon, still alive for a prestigious Borgata Poker trophy, along with a $41,773. Almost two-thirds of the returning field will be getting paid, as there are (63) places paid for the tournament, with a min-cash of $592. Coverage of the action will pick right back up once the cards are in the air, and continue until another Borgata Poker champion is crowned. There are two other “main events” that are on the schedule for Day 8 of the Borgata Fall Poker Open, both one day events, which means that there will be three new trophy winners by the time the day wraps up: